Social Media Marketing Recommendations for 2019

Hey everyone - I hope you’re all enjoying scoffing mince pies and dancing the night away. As a lone ranger with part time staff, my party season is looking a lot different from everyone else’s. But at least I don’t have the hangover - amirite?!

So while I’ve had some down time, I’m beginning to think about Sassy Digital and my client’s overall 2019 strategy and trends for social media. What’s changing? What can we improve on? Is there any social platforms we can take advantage of that we currently are not?

Here’s a few social media strategies, recommendations and trends that we will be using in 2019, that you can try too! And yes…I’m going to tell you briefly how to do them (although I will expand on these in a series of blog posts to go a bit more in depth!)

Pinterest will drive traffic to your website

Ok, ok, I may be a little late to the party here - but that’s because I never spent the time educating myself on the power of Pinterest. Here’s a few interesting stats to get us started:

More than 200 million people use Pinterest every month

40% of Pinners have a household income of over $100k per year. That’s a lot of buying power.

93% of Active Pinners Said They Use Pinterest to Plan for Purchases

50% Have Made a Purchase After Seeing a Promoted Pin

Pinners Spend 29% More on Retail Than Those Who Don’t Use Pinterest

I’ll stop there but the list could go on (by the way these stats are taken from this Sprout Social article where you can find more)

But why now? Why have I just decided to get more active with Pinterest? Well, a lot of people dedicate their website traffic to Pinterest so we thought that this year we will experiment with it so that we can delivery the best tips straight to you so that you can see success as well.

We’ve been active (pinning over 10 pins per day) for just under a week and just to give you perspective on this, our monthly page views have gone from 600 to 1.7k in this time. Wowzers.

What we have learnt and things you can implement right now:

1.Enable rich pins

Rich pins pull content directly from blogs or product pages on your website. Rich pins are more likely to be clicked on and shown during search. You can see whether you’re eligible for rich pins here and if you are (usually Squarespace, Shopify etc. will already code the content correctly for you) then the next step is to validate your rich pins.

2. Add a Pinterest widget to your browser

We use Google Chrome for browsing at Sassy Digital, which means it’s super easy to add widgets and apps to your browser. We simply searched ‘Pinterest for Google Chrome’ and it popped up with the application to download right away. What the benefit of having this? It means you can pin things straight from your website or while you’re browsing. Great if you’re looking to save items you love from your favourite e-commerce site - but even better if you want to save time and direct people straight to your site without having to fill in tonnes of information.

3. Pin between 5-10 times per day

As soon as you wake up or get to your desk, aim to pin 5-10 times to relevant boards. The way you can get even better results is to spend time creating your own pins and linking them directly to your website.

4. Create eye catching graphics

Get people to click through to your website by creating awesome graphics for your pins using…you guessed it…Canva! We literally tell all of our clients about Canva…we probably shouldn’t be telling you this because we do offer a Graphic Design and Branding service, but I’ve got to keep your interests as a small business my no.1 priority - so give it a go! There’s tonnes of templates for Pinterest on there but I would always advise to keep a consistent style so that people can recognise that it’s you and start to build a relationship with your brand.

5. Fill in all of the information for your board

Ok so I have to admit that our Pinterest was looking a hot mess before we went and sorted it out last week. We changed all of our board titles so that they were easily searchable, filled in all of the descriptions for searchability, updated the cover photos so that when looking at boards on our page they all look consistent and nice to look at. Make sure you go through and edit everything so that it’s both visually appealing and appealing for SEO.

6. Write great captions

Writing captions is all about SEO. When writing captions make sure you think about what your dream client would search for if they were looking for that particular pin. Then write it in the box. We usually finish this with a call to action and another link to the article or page on our website. Finish your caption off with up to 20 hashtags that are specifically relevant to that pin alone. No, I don’t want to see you copy and pasting the same hashtags here like you do on Instagram (yes, I know that little secret…you should see my notes on my phone!)

Remember: Pinterest isn't social media. It's a search engine.

2. Your social media video strategy is really important

Noticed that your Instagram likes on your posts are decreasing? Yeah so have we. And we’re not the only ones. I’ve noticed recently on Instagram loads of bloggers have been complaining that no one is liking their posts that they’ve spent time creating and how Instagram and the algorithm is the big bad wolf. Well let me tell you something bloggers of the world. You’ve got it all wrong.

The main reason no one likes your posts anymore is because no one is interested in a curated feed anymore. Our feeds are clogged up with curated (yet beautiful) content. But we want to see realness, we want to see what’s happening in real time. Which is why everyone is looking to stories.

You NEED to be on Instagram stories if you’re not already on there already. Show your face, get comfortable and say hello to your followers! Nurture your little community!!!!

IGTV

A little note on IGTV while we’re at it. It’s no secret that Instagram controls the way we consume content. They introduced IGTV this year which seemed to be a total flop. But I’m not disregarding the new feature just yet - although I did a poll and all of our followers said they don’t watch IGTV yet. I’ve set myself a little challenge. I’ll be sharing short videos - max. 3 minutes of super easy to put into practice social media and digital marketing tips. I’ll be doing one per week and I’m going to check back in with you to let you know if this has affected anything in a few month’s time.

In the mean time, why don’t you think of some short videos you can produce using your camera phone for IGTV that your followers can get useful tips from?

In the interest of sharing secrets, I film IGTV using my phone, create a cover slide using Canva, edit it using Splice (it’s so easy and has a great selection of backing music on there), export in HD and then upload it to IG. The last video I uploaded took me 10 minutes in total to film, edit and upload. Now that’s what I call fast marketing.

3. Continue to build your email list

I have to say the second half of this year has been a shocker for my mailing list. We went from sending out regular bi-monthly emails to sending none at all. But I’ll be honest I spread myself a little too thin and haven’t had the time lately. But I plan for this to change in the New Year.

We send our client emails out like clockwork. We help them to build their list and implement them to make more sales on their behalf. But how can you do this yourself I hear you ask? Well, simply set up a pop up on your website to encourage sign ups, offer a discount or a freebee like we do, then regularly serve your audience and send out free tips and information as well as offers, and information on your products or services. For more newsletter tips visit the Sassy Bites Blog, or to make newsletters that really catch attention, you can buy our newsletter photoshop templates on the Sassy Shop.

So I hope you found these tips and recommendations useful. Make sure you follow me on Instagram @lucyhitchcock_ and @sassydigital and don’t forget to DM us if you have any questions at all! I would love to hear from you!

Sassy Digital Ltd., company registration number 09528817, a private limited company registered in England and Wales, with registered office and principal place of business at Barclays Eagle Labs, County Gates, 300 Poole Rd, Bournemouth BH12 1AZ. Our contact telephone number is +447738154150 and our contact email address is info@sassydigital.co.uk